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Dropbox Engineering Career Framework

dropbox.github.io

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Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework

#81

Post by sillysaurusx »

scarface_74 wrote: post #73
0xEF wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also in the same boat as both of you, but I'm not sure I agree with the idea that I need to do a bunch of extra work to prove some nebulous concept like "impact at the next level" or whatever buzzwoo we want to say in place of that. If the manager wants to develop my talent, then they need to get off their over-priced rear ends and do so. I feel like making everyone at the lower levels shoulder all of the account…

> If the manager wants to develop my talent, then they need to get off their over-priced rear ends and do so. You are responsible for your own career. When (hypothetical) you get ready to look for another job, do you really want to only be able to say that you were a ticket taker or do you want to be able to say you led initiatives? Even if you don’t really care about getting ahead, you still have to be able to stand…

One way to stand out is to be nice, funny, and make a genuine personal connection with whoever the decision makers are. It sounds cheesy but it’s worked for me back when I didn’t particularly stand out.

I was competent though, which is always a requirement; this won’t work for smooth talkers only.

Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework

#82

Post by ebiester »

ravenstine wrote: post #47
serial_dev wrote: post #27

It could be that I’m getting old, became a parent and working remotely from the middle of nowhere, but do I need to get to the next level? I really wouldn’t mind keeping my current salary, adjust it for inflation and I’m good. I don’t care about my title, I don’t want to manage people, I don’t want to work harder than I need to. I just want to pay off my mortgage, have some leftover money for vacations, have time for…

Career frameworks at corporations should be mostly ignored. They are thinly veiled attempts to extract more work from the same employees. This is why "there's always room for improvement" is seemingly infinite. Your performance reviews can be stellar, BUT you surely must want to sacrifice more of your time and mental health to move to the next rung, right?

So, yes and no.

It takes effort to become better than you are at your current level. To get past junior, that should happen by osmosis. For some people, talent alone will take them to senior. For others, they will need to put in the time to learn how do work more efficiently.

Consider that it will take a senior developer 20 hours to do a job a junior might take 80 and the quality will be better for the senior. In turn, the senior may only code 20 hours a week and spend the other 20 in something that might take a staff engineer 5 hours.

The problem is that skill acquisition takes time.

Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework

#83

Post by sillysaurusx »

0xEF wrote: post #80
scarface_74 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the manager wants to develop my talent, then they need to get off their over-priced rear ends and do so. You are responsible for your own career. When (hypothetical) you get ready to look for another job, do you really want to only be able to say that you were a ticket taker or do you want to be able to say you led initiatives? Even if you don’t really care about getting ahead, you still have to be able to stand…

I never said anything about not being responsible for my own career. There was a previous implication that we need to help the boss look good, which is BS. If I want to develop myself because I want to explore different options or expand my skill set, I am free to and generally opt to do so. If a manager wants to develop my skills, then that is their responsibility. Again, let's not shift all the accountability to th…

I’m super curious how old you are. I’m about to hit 37, so 40 is marching closer.

Love your email by the way.

Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework

#84

Post by deergomoo »

serial_dev wrote: post #27

It could be that I’m getting old, became a parent and working remotely from the middle of nowhere, but do I need to get to the next level? I really wouldn’t mind keeping my current salary, adjust it for inflation and I’m good. I don’t care about my title, I don’t want to manage people, I don’t want to work harder than I need to. I just want to pay off my mortgage, have some leftover money for vacations, have time for…

Same for me. I enjoy what I do, but if I didn’t need the money, I sure as wouldn’t be doing it for someone else. I’d just be working on whatever projects I found interesting.

Career goals? Keep things as they are.

Work is only something I have to do to have a decent life the rest of the time.

Unfortunately it feels very difficult to say that in earshot of one’s employer without being branded some sort of burnout slacker, even though I do work hard and to a high standard.

Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework

#85

Post by dartos »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #81
scarface_74 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the manager wants to develop my talent, then they need to get off their over-priced rear ends and do so. You are responsible for your own career. When (hypothetical) you get ready to look for another job, do you really want to only be able to say that you were a ticket taker or do you want to be able to say you led initiatives? Even if you don’t really care about getting ahead, you still have to be able to stand…

One way to stand out is to be nice, funny, and make a genuine personal connection with whoever the decision makers are. It sounds cheesy but it’s worked for me back when I didn’t particularly stand out. I was competent though, which is always a requirement; this won’t work for smooth talkers only.

This one crazy hack is the secret to countless numbers of fruitful careers.

Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework

#87

Post by jameshart »

rockyj wrote: post #44
serial_dev wrote: post #27

It could be that I’m getting old, became a parent and working remotely from the middle of nowhere, but do I need to get to the next level? I really wouldn’t mind keeping my current salary, adjust it for inflation and I’m good. I don’t care about my title, I don’t want to manage people, I don’t want to work harder than I need to. I just want to pay off my mortgage, have some leftover money for vacations, have time for…

I am in the same boat. Specially after delivering multiple high impact systems and still getting the talk - "This is great, but not enough for the next promotion". So after a while I just realized that these levels are artificial and meaningless to a large extent.

Doesn’t sound like you are ‘in the same boat’.

The OP said they don’t care about promotion to the next level they just want to keep getting paid to do the same job.

You seem to want to be recognized for your contribution with increased responsibility.

Those aren’t the same thing, even if the way both of you are reacting is with a similar kind of cynical dismissal of the idea that a ‘career framework’ can help you with your needs.

Which is weird because it honestly sounds like both of you are looking for a clear career framework. Either one in OP’s case where it’s clear what ‘coasting’ looks like - meeting expectations for a level year after year and not striving for promotion; or one in your case where it’s very clear to you what you need to do to reach the next level.

You can object to the implementation of the promotion policy under a framework, but your problem is not with the concept of a career framework - if there were no guidance for job levels you would be in an even worse position when it comes to complaining about your promotion prospects.

Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework

#88

Post by scarface_74 »

anelson wrote: post #41

When reading BigTech career ladders like this one, I immediately fall into the trap of projecting myself onto the ladder, and getting upset when the level I've chosen for myself is described as something that sounds far removed from what I want to do. I must remind myself to frame this as how Dropbox describes the things that they value in each position. An L7 SWE is the most valuable SWE in Dropbox, as measured by t…

It doesn’t matter how good you are as a developer, you can only have so much impact coding 40 hours a week. I wanted to move up both to increase my autonomy and my vision is much larger than the amount of work I can physically do with my own hands.

As a 50 year old who has been doing this for awhile, I can and have:

- spent time on zoom calls and flown out to customer’s sites to gather requirements and help close a sale (cloud consulting).

- developed and managed implementation plans

- been both a dev lead and a lead for cloud architecture projects

- can be your standard, experienced enterprise developer

- I know almost every type of database out there and best practices for each

- can set up a “Well Architected” AWS account from an empty account including pipelines to deploy to EC2, Lambda or Kubernetes (EKS).

But I can only do one at a time. My “impact” comes from companies knowing that I can credibly speak to all of the individuals involved and they can fly me out to a customer’s site without me embarrassing them

Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework

#89

Post by jameshart »

zerr wrote: post #10

In all of "career frameworks" I've seen, people who actually build things are labelled as "juniors" and "middles" while those who navigate office politics and ass-kissing are "seniors" and above.

A great team of people building things is useless to a company if what they are building is the wrong thing.

In order to bring thousands of engineers to bear on a business’s problems you need people figuring out what everyone should be building.

Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework

#90

Post by jokab »

mk89 wrote: post #60
tikkabhuna wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the UK and since buying a house, I really feel no need to keep going higher. Property pricing in the UK is extremely damaging. If I found a job at a higher level that I thought I'd really enjoy and that I'd be good at, I'll be interested, but otherwise I'm content.

Well, you could think about making more money for retirement. Not saying you need to get crazy about it, though. I am not sure how the hell we will be able to manage that (retirement) with the lifestyle we got today. Not that I am rich, far from it, but I am not sure I want to ask my kids for help... and that seems more and more the direction we're moving in.

..not sure I want to ask my kids for help...

I shiver at the thought.

Culturally, as a Filipino kid, everyone knows that kids are indebted to the parents for them being born. Wtf.

I do help my parents because I love them, they dont ask but they don't need to.

But I will not ask help from my kids, they dont owe me anything.

We live in the UK now, but my wife and I will just have to retire to the Philippines where everything is a whole lot cheaper.

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